Comcast-NBCU union likely to face big regulatory challenge

Federal regulatory approval of the vast Comcast-NBC Universal joint venture announced today could be intense and could last longer than the full year that top officials at the two media companies suggest. Those concerns include that the new entity could stifle competition from small Internet video-streaming companies and pose threats to consumer privacy through data collected with new interactive cable technology. A variety of consumer interest and net neutrality proponents, as well small broadcasters raised concerns about the deal today.

Already, U.S. Rep. It is "imperative" that the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department "rigorously assess whether this transaction is in the public interest," Waxman said. Henry Waxman, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has raised red flags about the deal and has promised to hold hearings on it. The FCC said through a spokeswoman that the agency is committed to a "thorough, fair and fact-based ... review" of the merger. The joint venture, valued at $37 billion , would control 82% of cable programming channels, according to Comcast officials.

Waxman said he is concerned not only about competition issues, but also the future of the production and distribution of video content across broadcasting, cable, online and mobile platforms. Regulators will be concerned whether Comcast, operating in certain cities where it dominates cable TV access, could limit access to its video content by other cable providers. In addition, Comcast's future video content might somehow be restricted from other sources of television traffic, such as rival Verizon DSL, he added. The agency will also be watching whether Comcast could limit access to its content to emerging video providers that use wired or wireless networks, said two antitrust experts. "It's hard to tell whether there are serious antitrust claims to be made, but claims and assertions have been made that, once merged, Comcast might have incentives to favor its own media content versus other content distributed through its cable distribution network," said Keith Hylton, a professor at Boston University School of Law, in an interview. Antitrust attorney Brian Weinberger, at the firm of Buchalter Nemer in Los Angeles, said in an interview that he expects "serious scrutiny" of the merger by various regulatory agencies that could last 18 months, because so many third parties will want to weigh in with comments.

The FCC will probably review city-by-city the amount of cable and Internet distribution that Comcast currently has, and will likely stipulate how it distributes content in each location, Weinberger said. "Ultimately, I'd say the government approves the deal with stipulations," he said. Weinberger said industry groups representing sports programmers, among others, might object to the merger, noting NBC's strong coverage of sporting events, including the Olympics. "They could well lobby for some restriction on NBC's access rights," he said. For companies delivering video over IP (sometimes called "over the top video"), using wired and wireless networks, the merger could prove fairly dire, said Andrew Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access Project. "All these over-the-top video companies depend on a broad access to programming," Schwartzman said in an interview. "The new Comcast could make programming deals that don't make the programming available to other providers." Schwartzman said he believes companies like Hulu Ltd. , one of the over-the-top video providers that is minority-owned NBCU, could have its plug pulled, although Comcast and NBCU officials gave no indications today that would happen. On another front, the Center for Digital Democracy , a privacy rights advocacy group based in Washington, raised concerns about consumer privacy with the merger, noting that Comcast is arranging interactive polling technology through its cable operations and advertising company Canoe Ventures. Vuze Inc. , a company that uses the BitTorrent P2P protocol to distribute Web-based video, and Boxee Inc., an online media provider, are also in peril, he said. Such polling is being tested with 10,000 cable subscribers using cable set-top devices starting next year, Comcast officials said today, to provide real-time decision-making for providing targeted advertising to consumers.

The concerns raised by public interest groups were dismissed by the Free State Foundation , a conservative think tank. What bothers the center is that the information gleaned from interactive polling will be stored in a database that needs to be safeguarded. Foundation president Randolph May said in a statement that the merger should receive "close scrutiny," but that it will be too risky for Comcast to favor its own content over the content of other providers. Hylton, the BU professor, also said there is a potential benefit to consumers with the deal, since the merger primarily vertically integrates a content creating company (NBCU) and a content distribution company (Comcast). "If you have a single owner of the whole stream [of media], theoretically it will set the best price for both access to distribution and content, so in that sense it's good for consumers." IDG News Service Staff Writer Grant Gross contributed to this story.

Google Launches Dictionary and Translated Web Search

Amid all the hubbub over Google DNS on Thursday, the search giant also released two more helpful tools to help you get a richer search experience and improve your language skills. Dictionary Google dictionary puts a full-service resource right at your fingertips that can be accessed through Google's Dictionary page or through a regular Web search. Google launched its dictionary project, offering a feature-rich resource that goes beyond simple definitions of words; and its new translated Web search makes it easier to find Web pages written in more than 40 languages.

To access words through regular search, click on the "definitions" link on the top right of your results page next to where it says how many results Google has returned for your query (click to enlarge the screen cap). Google dictionary isn't just for English. Notable languages currently missing from the project include Japanese and Persian. The project contains 27 other languages, including the major Western European languages, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, and many more. Google Dictionary also has an English-to-foreign language component, allowing you to translate single words from English into a foreign language or vice versa. Rich Definitions Page Google's word definitions page is full of useful information including an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation guide, synonyms, standard definitions, and usage examples. This is similar to what you can do in Google Translate.

You can also find external links to Princeton University, Wikipedia, and elsewhere to see to further definitions and usages of the word in question; however, it should be noted this collection of aggregated links on Google's dictionary page has been around for some time, according to The Los Angeles Times. Try searching in English for words such as schadenfreude or Zoroastrianism to see this in action. If the word you're searching for is found in another language, Google provides a link to that dictionary as well, and particularly difficult or unusual words include an audio file to let you hear how the word is pronounced. Some words may also trigger image results; search for winceyette to see an example of this. From what I can tell, Google's dictionary project has not been merged with the spell check on Google Docs.

You can also bookmark particular words for easier access at another time. TIP: Google's dictionary is very comprehensive, so for all you juveniles out there: Yes, you can find your favorite dirty words and their definitions in Google Dictionary. Translated Search Google has added a feature to its search options panel that allows you to search in English across Web sites in other languages. And no, these words don't have pronunciation sound files. Google has had a similar feature for some time that allows you to automatically translate foreign language Web sites appearing in Google's regular search results.

To activate the feature, choose a search term like "Beethoven" and then click on "Show Options" on the top left of the results page. But this newest feature searches only foreign language Web sites. Then click on "Translated Search" at the bottom of the options panel on the left side. (Click on the screen cap for a closer look.) Once you've got your translated search, a box at the top of the results page tells you what language the results are being translated into and what language the results are being translated from. TIP: If you installed the javascript uncovered by Gizmodo that gives you the rumored visual revamp of Google, you won't be able to access translated search or Google Dictionary from the search results page. You have the option to add other languages to expand your search; Google supports 42 choices.

To get this functionality you either have to delete your Google cookie or use another Web browser. Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul).

NASA, Microsoft want you to be a Martian

NASA and Microsoft today said they have built a Web site that lets would-be Martians virtually explore the red planet. Unofficially the site promotes human space travel, something NASA would like promoted in a positive light and of course software development for Microsoft. The official goal of the Be A Martian site is to inspire digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

NetworkWorld Extra: 10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos The site, unveiled at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, also wants software developers to compete for and win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use, NASA stated. There are "tourist regions" of the planet not to be missed on the virtual map of the red planet. Visitors to the site will be able to set up a Martian user name, and account to virtually explore the planet, call up images of the huge in Mars Valles Mariner and potentially collaborate with thousands of other users to assist scientists in exploring Martian surface changes. The site will also feature a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select. "With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor.

Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted questions. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a release. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) last week said they are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Mars in fact has been getting a lot of attention recently. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the Martian surface.

The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s. And the ESA recently said it wants volunteers to take a simulated 520-day trip to Mars. The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 program being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research. Spirit has been stuck in a place NASA calls "Troy" since April 23 when the rover's wheels broke through a crust on the surface that was covering a bright-toned, slippery sand underneath. And on the real planet, NASA said last week it was beginning the long process of extricating its Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap. After a few drive attempts to get Spirit out in the subsequent days, it began sinking deeper in the sand trap.

Driving was suspended to allow time for tests and reviews of possible escape strategies, NASA stated.

Indian provider launches Twitter by SMS

Twitter has tied up with India's largest mobile services provider, Bharti Airtel, to allow its subscribers to send and receive Twitter messages using SMS (short message service), the micro-blogging service said Wednesday on its blog. Twitter so far has activated full SMS service in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K., the company said. The partnership means that a huge population can now send Twitter messages at standard rates and receive them for free, Twitter said.

Bharti Airtel said on its Web site that the tie-up with Twitter would be exclusive for only four weeks, suggesting that after that period, the service may also be offered by other service providers in India. Twitter did not reply to an e-mail asking if it planned ties with other service providers. Bharti Airtel wants to take advantage of the exclusivity period to ensure that Twitter is associated with its brand by consumers, Bharti Airtel said. SMS access to Twitter is likely to be more popular in India than mobile services that require Internet access, because a very small percentage of mobile phones in India are Internet enabled. There are over one billion people with Internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones, and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS, Twitter said. Twitter launched a service in India last year that allowed subscribers to use the service without paying international SMS charges, but it discontinued the offering, citing costs, according to some reports.

India has a number of high-profile Twitter users, including the country's Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor. Cows are considered sacred in Indian society. The minister landed himself in controversy recently when he referred to "holy cows" in jest in one of his posts on Twitter. India added 15 million mobile subscribers in August, taking the total number of subscribers to 457 million, according to the country's telecommunications regulator. The country added 14.4 million subscribers in July.

Engineers fix the shortcomings of the traditional firewall

Sometimes, the problems we experience with computers are a result of a legacy design. As a result, the product in use today isn't as effective as it could be because of aging or obsolete design. Hardware or software might have been architected 10 or 20 years ago when the world of computing was vastly different from the way it is today. Such is the case of the traditional firewall, whose design dates back two decades to the late 1980s. Early firewalls consisted of packet filtering software that inspected all traffic coming into and going out of a network.

Later generations of firewalls were engineered to approve specific applications or to look for Internet traffic using specific ports. If a packet of data met specific rules, its transmission was simply dropped. These legacy firewalls were built on the assumption that an application would respect its protocol which would respect the port. Or, Port 25 must mean SMTP and that must mean e-mail. For example, Port 80 must mean HTTP and that must mean Web browsing. Podcast: Better security for your applications That's not so true today.

Skype and BitTorrent, for example, hop around and use multiple ports like Port 80 or 443. A traditional firewall isn't expecting this kind of traffic there. Many modern applications are built to be flexible, meaning they change ports as needed to deliver their content. Unfortunately, the old assumptions about port mapping applications are out the window today. These applications are meant to catch the problems that legacy firewalls sometimes miss. This has created a cottage industry for other "bolt-on" security applications like intrusion detection/prevention systems and antivirus/antimalware scanning. The result can be a patchwork of security applications that scan traffic multiple times and add to the complexity of your infrastructure.

These engineers took their expertise from working at places such as Check Point Software Technologies, Juniper Networks and NetScreen Technologies and started Palo Alto Networks.   They set out to design a single firewall appliance to address three business problems: 1. Identify and control applications, including enabling applications that can be productive to the business. 2. Prevent threats from harming the network. 3. Simplify the security infrastructure. Seeing an opportunity to "fix the firewall," a group of security engineers started a company in 2005 to redesign the firewall architecture from the ground up. The Palo Alto firewall uses a unique single-pass process for traffic classification, user/group mapping and content scanning. It integrates with your Active Directory to harvest relevant user information such as role and group assignments. * Content-ID provides content scanning that prevents threats within permitted traffic, and provides granular control of Web surfing activities as well as file and data filtering. Three technologies embedded into one appliance eliminate the need for bolt-on products: * App-ID is traffic classification technology that determines the exact identity of nearly 900 applications flowing across the network, irrespective of port, protocol, SSL encryption or evasive tactics. * User-ID links IP addresses to specific user identities, enabling visibility and control of network activity on a per-user basis.

As a result, the firewall allows you to have a fine grain policy that covers a user or group, an application and specific content all at once. Or perhaps you want to allow the marketing department to access social media applications like Facebook, but no one else. For example, you could enable just the sales department to use WebEx but not the desktop sharing feature of the application. You would think that asking a single device to do all this inspection and classification at once would create latency. They built this firewall with function-specific hardware that enables parallel processing. But remember, the engineers "fixed" the firewall by rethinking the architecture.

Instead of packets doing multiple passes through various functions, the data streams are processed in an essentially linear model. As for using the Palo Alto firewall to simplify your infrastructure, it's possible to replace multiple devices with just this one. This helps to optimize performance, even in the face of massive volumes of traffic. That's what John Kovacevich, systems analyst at Texas A&M University at Galveston has done. The university also uses the Palo Alto device to protect its network against viruses and other threats.

After deploying his Palo Alto Networks box, he retired his old traffic shaper and now uses his new firewall to manage traffic bandwidth. "We can't stop students from using peer-to-peer applications, but we can shape it so that it gets a lower priority and less bandwidth than our e-learning applications," according to Kovacevich. Because of the integration with Active Directory, Kovacevich is able to identify the specific student whose machine seems to be infected. Now I can do it by name," Kovacevich says. He can call the student and schedule a cleanup of the PC. "I don't have to track down someone by the port anymore. He likes that he now has just one device to manage for multiple functions. "I had multiple products before and now they are just sitting on a shelf," Kovacevich says. "Palo Alto offers a product with a lot of features in one box at a very competitive price." Those words are music to the ears of the product engineers who took a chance on designing a new kind of firewall using best practices for the modern era of Internet applications.

E-readers could push growth in e-textbook market, analysts say

With more e-readers hitting the U.S. market, analysts predict a big uptick in device sales in late 2010 with a strong surge in the popularity of electronic textbooks used in high schools and colleges in time for school in the fall of 2011. The market for e-textbooks is considered a rich one, but is also governed by many factors, including the cost of e-readers. How fast and large the e-textbook market grows depend on a diverse array of more than 20 textbook publishers in the U.S., many of whom are weighing the use of proprietary or standard e-publishing technology and evaluating whether students will rely on e-readers to purchase expensive textbooks and other books, analysts said. "It's a two-year window for e-textbooks before there's significant market traction," said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner in an interview. "But it's a fertile market." Weiner predicted that a number of major vendors, including Google Inc. and Apple Inc., could enter the market with devices and marketing plans that involve textbook publishers and, possibly, college bookstores. They can run about $400 - the price of the new Irex DR800SG announced yesterday - putting them out of the reach of many students.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on a tablet computer , perhaps with a 9-inch screen, for debut in February. It will use the Verizon Wireless network for downloading books and newspapers. That hardware could be targeted at college students accustomed to dropping $100 or more for traditional hardback texts, Weiner said. "An Apple tablet could be the sweetest college textbook reader you've ever seen," Weiner said. "Apple is letting the e-reader market simmer and will come into it when the market's ready to boil." The market in the U.S. now includes the Irex device, which has an 8.1-inch screen and goes on sale at Best Buy stores in October. Sony Reader devices are being sold at Best Buy to work with AT&T's wireless network. Plastic Logic is planning to introduce an e-reader in the U.S., while Asian manufacturers are expected to launch products - though not necessarily in the U.S., she said. "There's also a lot of speculation about whether Barnes & Noble will launch their own e-reader or use existing ones," she said.

And Amazon.com has produced several Kindle e-readers with wireless connections via Sprint Nextel Inc. "While we've just seen three vendors in the U.S., there will be a lot of activity in the next year," said Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst at iSuppli. While the cost of components inside e-readers is dropping, lowering the overall cost of an e-reader, Jakhanwal predicted it could be three years before e-readers hit the magic $99 price point coveted by many consumer electronics manufacturers to attract a large audience. A publisher might not want to sell books only to a one platform, he noted. Globally, iSuppli estimates about 5 million e-readers will be sold in 2009, a number expected to climb to between 13 million and 14 million in 2010. Weiner said that textbook publishers differ over the use of the open ePub standard or a proprietary approach like that used by the Kindle. Publishers are also weighing whether e-textbooks should be rented, and if they are sold, whether buyers can re-sell them afterwards. "There's a lot to be worked out," Weiner said.

For example, a user might click on a button in text to see a video of a lecture by the author of the text, or to click for an updated interactive quiz on the material, delivered via a fast wireless network. "It's important for textbook publishers to give more value and charge more, with an ability to update material so a user would want it for being current," Weiner said. A potentially lucrative area for publishers is "value-added" technology that can be included with e-books, Weiner said. Some colleges are also testing e-readers to be used as mobile clients that connect to a college's server for access to course work, professors' notes and other materials. "The possibilities are endless," Weiner said, noting that some textbook publishers are experimenting with hybrid models that combine e-book technology with print-on-demand books, so that a publisher only prints the portions of text or the number of textbooks that it needs. While there is clearly a market opportunity with e-readers and e-books, including e-textbooks, there seems to be a general consensus that e-readers will encourage reading and promote education , analysts, some educators and even librarians have said. Weiner said it is too early to determine how much an e-textbook might save over the cost of tradition textbooks, adding that college-owned bookstores will have a say in the price of e-books. "You have to figure you can't [leave out] the bookstore, since that's a large revenue stream for a school," he added. "It's basically a question of whether you empower them to to become online bookstores, as is happening in some cases." Some publishers might use the ability to attract life-long e-book readers by first luring them with lower-priced e-textbooks. "One motivation for publishers, as they've told me, is if you get students in the habit of using e-books and get e-readers devices in their hands, then it might be easier to get them to buy other e-books," Weiner said.

Having e-textbooks and e-readers "could stimulate reading, and that improves education," Weiner said. "Anything to get people to read more, particularly young people, is big."

Undercover 1.5 ousts iPhone thieves with push notifications

It's 2 AM. Do you know where your iPhone is? What if you want an app devoted to recovering a stolen iPhone or iPod Touch-one that has a few more tricks up its sleeve? Well, maybe you do, thanks to MobileMe's "Find my iPhone," but what if you're not a MobileMe subscriber?

That's exactly what Orbicule's Undercover for iPhone is. Our iPhones are now smarter, faster, stronger, better, and able to let third-party apps do more than ever. We've already covered this app and its Mac OS X cousin, back when push notifications were little more than a bullet point on a wish list, but times have changed. Back in the 1.0 days, when Undercover was just a wee lad, you had to fool your iPhone's captor into launching the app before it was able to transmit its location. You can make the messages as enticing as you want-say, by having them pretend to be a notification from your bank account. Not an easy task: Thanks to App Store policy, apps cannot change their names or icons, and I'm guessing that all but the thickest criminals knew better than to launch an application called "Undercover." Now you have the ability to send push notifications with any message of your choosing directly to the iPhone-yes, just like MobileMe. But the comparisons end there.

If the crook chooses to view the push notification, Undercover will launch, disguised either as a game that's taking its sweet time to load or loading any Website of your choosing, such as the aforementioned bank's. While the thief is distracted, Undercover will be happy to save the device's GPS coordinates and IP address to Orbicule's Website. They'll also be sent directly to any police officer you've contacted to work on the case and registered in Orbicule's Undercover Center. Each time that Undercover launches, it will save a new set of coordinates that you can view in Google Maps. Orbicule has made a video to demonstrate this killer feature. You could use Find My iPhone to collect live GPS information from MobileMe and log a record of GPS coordinates via Orbicule, submitting it all to the police.

It looks as though this app could be used not only as an alternative to Find My iPhone, but a nice companion app as well. It's still far from perfect, at least until (or unless) Apple can be made to change their iPhone app policies to let third-party apps like Undercover do a little more. It requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. Undercover for the iPhone costs $5 and works on all iPhones and iPod touches.

The Internet’s First 40 Years: Top Ten Milestones

While 40 years in a person's lifetime is a very long time, the Internet - which turned 40 today - is really only getting started. No birthday celebration for the Internet would be complete without giving recognition to some of the biggest milestones. Still, like just about any 40-year-old guy, the Internet has packed a lot of changes into its life so far.

Deciding on which ones is a totally tough call, because the Internet has made such a huge impact on anyone lucky enough to access it. So here, in chronological order, is my rather arbitrary list of Top Ten Internet Milestones, gleaned largely from a nostalgic look back through the pages of PC World. But as I view things, anyway, it's important to pay tribute to the myriad technologies created over the past four decades to connect people to the Internet - first through modems and then through wireless and cable - as well as to let them access communications like data, radio, and TV in ways once unimaginable. October 29, 1969. Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA college professor, sends a two-letter message - "lo" - to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. October 13, 1994 - The - eventually to be known as Netscape Navigator - is released as beta code. The Internet is born.

November 6, 1997 - Intel ships a videoconferencing system that runs on the Internet (gasp!) as well as on ISDN phone lines (remember them?) and corporate LANs. February 18, 1998 - The first V.90 modems, enabling Internet access at the then-whopping rate of 56 Kbps, are shipped to stores by 3Com Corp. August 21, 2002 - Together with T-Mobile and HP, Starbucks expands WiFi access to users at 1200 coffee shops throughout the US . Early January, 2009 - Yahoo shows off Connected TV, a platform allowing Web widgets to dock on Internet-connected HDTVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sometime in September 1999 - An Internet-enabled game machine named Dreamcast debuts, pioneering a pathway that will eventually lead to Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PS3. June 28, 2000 - Metricom rolls out the then-blazingly fast, 128Kbps Ricochet wireless service in Atlanta and San Diego. Early July, 2009 - Internet radio services like Pandora, Blip.fm and Last.fm are saved - albeit temporarily - when recording companies agree to make royalty fees more comparable to those paid by satellite TV services, for example. October 22, 2009 - Microsoft's Internet TV, a new service for accessing Web-based streaming TV shows and movies from directly inside Media Center - finally leaves beta as part of the launch of Windows 7.

How a Botnet Gets Its Name

There is a new kid in town in the world of botnets - isn't there always? When a botnet like Festi pops onto the radar screen of security researchers, it not only poses the question of what is it doing and how much damage it can cause; there is also the issue of what to call it. A heavyweight spamming botnet known as Festi has only been tracked by researchers with Message Labs Intelligence since August, but is already responsible for approximately 5 percent of all global spam (around 2.5 billion spam emails per day), according to Paul Wood, senior analyst with Messagelabs, which keeps tabs on spam and botnet activity. For all of their prevalence and power online, when it comes to naming botnets, there is no real system in place.

Wood explained Festi's history. "The name came from Microsoft; they identified the malware behind it and gave it the catchiest name," said Wood. "Usually, a number of companies will identify the botnet at the same time and give it a name based on the botnet's characteristics. A common practice so far has been to name it after the malware associated with it; this is a practice that has some drawbacks. Its original name was backdoor.winnt/festi.a or backdoor.trojan. Usually the name and convention comes from wording found within the actual software itself and that is used in some way. Backdoor droppers are common and that wouldn't stick, it would be too generic.

This one may have been related to a word like festival." Because the security industry lacks a uniform way to title botnets, the result is sometimes a long list of names for the same botnet that are used by different antivirus vendors and that can be confusing to customers. The Srizbi botnet is also called Cbeplay and Exchanger. As it stands now, the infamous Conficker is also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido. Kracken is also the botnet Bobax. For instance Gumblar, a large botnet that made news earlier this year (and is possibly perking up again), first hit the gumblar.cn domain, said DiMino. Why they are called what they are called is up to the individual researchers who first identified them. "A lot of time it depends on the first time we see bot in action and what it does," according to Andre DiMino, director of Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer group of cybercrime busters who, in their free time, are dedicated to finding and stopping malicious activity such as botnets.

Another known as Avalanche was deemed so because of what DiMino described as a preponderance of domain names being used by the botnet. Over the years naming for malware has had a few ground rules. "Don't name anything after the author," he said. "That was most important back when viruses were written for fame." Weafer whipped off a few botnet names that have made headlines in recent years and did his best to recall how they got their titles. The naming dilemma can be a difficult one to tackle according to Vincent Weafer, vice president of Symantec's security response division. Among the more notable, he said, is Conficker, which is thought to be a combination of the English word configure and the German word ficker, which is obscene. Kracken is named after a legendary sea monster. The Storm botnet was named after a famous European storm and the associated spam that was going around related to it.

And MegaD, a large spambot, got its name because it is known for spam that pushes Viagra and various male enhancement herbal remedies. "You can guess what the D stands for after Mega," he said. Because botnets morph and change so frequently, he said, they rarely continue to have a meaningful association with the original malware sample that prompted researchers to name it in the first place. "Botmasters don't restrict themselves to a single piece of malware," said Ollmann "They use multiple tools to generate multiple families of malware. Gunter Ollmann, VP of research with security firm Damballa, believes it is time for a systematic approach to naming botnets that vendors can agree upon. To call a particular a botnet after one piece of malware is naïve and doesn't really encompass what the actual threat is." Also see Botnets: 4 Reasons It's Getting Harder to Find Them and Fight Them Ollmann also adds that the vast majority of malware has no real humanized name, and is seen simply as digits, which makes naming impossible. The most recent iteration of the discussion focused on how to transport the meta-data that describes the particular name threat of the malware.

The result is a confusing landscape for enterprise customers who may be trying to clean up a mess made by a virulent worm, only to find various vendors using different names for the same problem. "There is some work going on among AV vendors to come up with naming convention for the malware sites, but this is independent of the botnets," said Ollmann. "This has been going on for several years now. But there has been no visible progress the end user can make use of." Ollmann said Damballa is now using a botnet naming system, with the agreement of customers, which favors a two-part name and works much like the hurricane naming system used by the National Weather Service. Once a botnet is identified, the name is used and crossed it off the list. The first part of the name comes from a list of pre-agreed upon names. It becomes the name forever associated with that botnet.

While the botnet master changes their malware on a daily basis, they usually only change their malware family balance on a two-or-three day basis, said Ollmann. The second part of the name tracks the most common piece of malware that is currently associated with the botnet. The second part of the name then changes to in order to reflect that fluctuation. "So many of these are appearing it just becomes a case of assigning a human readable name and no other name associated with it," said Ollmann. "It is perhaps ungracious to name them with a hurricane naming system, but it speaks perhaps to the nature of this threat."

The Internet’s First 40 Years: Top Ten Milestones

While 40 years in a person's lifetime is a very long time, the Internet - which turned 40 today - is really only getting started. No birthday celebration for the Internet would be complete without giving recognition to some of the biggest milestones. Still, like just about any 40-year-old guy, the Internet has packed a lot of changes into its life so far.

Deciding on which ones is a totally tough call, because the Internet has made such a huge impact on anyone lucky enough to access it. So here, in chronological order, is my rather arbitrary list of Top Ten Internet Milestones, gleaned largely from a nostalgic look back through the pages of PC World. But as I view things, anyway, it's important to pay tribute to the myriad technologies created over the past four decades to connect people to the Internet - first through modems and then through wireless and cable - as well as to let them access communications like data, radio, and TV in ways once unimaginable. October 29, 1969. Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA college professor, sends a two-letter message - "lo" - to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. October 13, 1994 - The - eventually to be known as Netscape Navigator - is released as beta code. The Internet is born.

November 6, 1997 - Intel ships a videoconferencing system that runs on the Internet (gasp!) as well as on ISDN phone lines (remember them?) and corporate LANs. February 18, 1998 - The first V.90 modems, enabling Internet access at the then-whopping rate of 56 Kbps, are shipped to stores by 3Com Corp. August 21, 2002 - Together with T-Mobile and HP, Starbucks expands WiFi access to users at 1200 coffee shops throughout the US . Early January, 2009 - Yahoo shows off Connected TV, a platform allowing Web widgets to dock on Internet-connected HDTVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sometime in September 1999 - An Internet-enabled game machine named Dreamcast debuts, pioneering a pathway that will eventually lead to Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PS3. June 28, 2000 - Metricom rolls out the then-blazingly fast, 128Kbps Ricochet wireless service in Atlanta and San Diego. Early July, 2009 - Internet radio services like Pandora, Blip.fm and Last.fm are saved - albeit temporarily - when recording companies agree to make royalty fees more comparable to those paid by satellite TV services, for example. October 22, 2009 - Microsoft's Internet TV, a new service for accessing Web-based streaming TV shows and movies from directly inside Media Center - finally leaves beta as part of the launch of Windows 7.

HITECH Act: What you need to know about new data-breach guidelines

Healthcare providers and others handling sensitive patient data are now finding the stakes raised if they suffer a data breach because of a new law known as the "Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act," or HITECH Act. Depending on whether a data breach arises from a simple mistake to willful theft, fines will range in tiers from as low as $100 per violation for a slip-up regarding unencrypted data to $1.5 million or more for knowingly and willfully violating the data-breach rules, say those familiar with the HITECH Act. "Under the HHS rule, you have to figure out if you had a data breach," says Rebecca Fayed, attorney-at-law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal's healthcare group division in Washington, D.C.. But the new rules, which cover both electronic and paper formats, are far from simple.  Healthcare organizations find IT cures for identity and security  The HITECH Act, devised by Congress primarily to address electronic medical records, is being noted for its impact in adding a tough data-breach notification requirement to the long list of long-existing Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) security and privacy rules. Passed by Congress in February, the HITECH Act is now coming into enforcement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which each have been given a role to play under the law, potentially levying punishments and fines on organizations that stumble in protecting personal health information. Like HIPAA, the HITECH Act covers healthcare providers, insurers, clearinghouses and also business associates handling personal information about patient health, as well as other protected information, including name, Social Security number, address and insurance account numbers.

If the data breach "is only five people, HHS doesn't want you calling them," though you will have to inform the individuals impacted. Fayed says there's often the misperception that the HITECH Act will require public disclosure of any data breach of unencrypted personal health information (PHI) but the fine print actually says the data breach has to have impacted at least 500 people in one state. "Then you have to notify the media," she says. And it appears there's no need to report an employee unintentionally accessing a record by mistake in the course of doing his  job. The HHS guidelines set forth two basic ways to secure that data, "encryption" for electronic data and "destruction" applied as a means to destroy electronic data or paper. A lot of the talk about HITECH is centering on encryption because the breach notification only applies to "unsecured PHI," Fayed says.

When it comes to encryption and stored data security, guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology are referenced, including NIST's FIPS 140-2 for certification of encryption products. So, the bottom line is the HHS-issued guidelines, now an interim final rule that went into effect Sept. 23 (though it won't be enforced until February 2010 by the office of civil rights at HHS), is a game-changer. Though encryption isn't mandatory under HITECH Act, just by bringing encryption technology into the discussion of a data breach the federal government is raising the bar about what's implied about best practices, Fayed notes. Wes Rishel, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, calls the HITECH Act ground-breaking. "This is the first time there's been a federal regulation for data breach," Rishel says. Although there are now far fewer known instances of data breaches involving PHI than credit cards, for example, it doesn't mean that these cases don't happen, many say. It changes the balance in terms of security and puts an emphasis unknown before on encryption because a data breach of encrypted data is not going to have to be reported.

Fraud involving stolen patient healthcare data, primarily Medicare/Medicaid identity theft for making money off submitting fraudulent claims, is not uncommon, Fayed says. "The reason you haven't heard about these is because people haven't had to report these yet," she says. But encryption use to protect stored data is not typical today among HIPAA-regulated organizations and they are going to be struggling to encrypt and decrypt effectively among business partners. "Encryption can create a big mess, too." The HITECH Act has more healthcare providers crafting encryption strategies.  "They should be deploying encryption," says Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna.

DEMOfall '09 product spotlight: Digsby

Let's be honest – keeping track of your favorite Web sites has become a real pain. Fear not, though, because a little cartoon blob named Digsby is here to help. Slideshow: 13 hot products from DEMOfall '09 Between Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Gmail and a whole slew of instant messaging protocols, the Internet has become a fragmented mess where you must constantly check for updates and shuttle between tabs and windows. Digsby, which is the brainchild of the Rochester, N.Y., company dotSyntax, is essentially a mass aggregator of social networking, e-mail and instant messaging sites.

At DEMO this week, Digsby announced that it has added Twitter to its already considerable arsenal of integrated social networking sites. But Digsby goes one step further than most aggregation applications because it actively notifies you every time there is an update to one of your e-mail or social networking accounts. However, Digsby didn't just incorporate Twitter into its platform but also made some significant changes to the Twitter format in the hopes of making it more accessible to users. If you can, try to sum up Digsby in 100 words or less. After the DEMO presentation, dotSyntax CEO and founder Steve Shapiro sat down with Network World to discuss how Digsby can make Internet use more efficient and what its designers plan on tackling next. Digsby helps you manage your instant message, e-mail and social networking accounts from one easy-to-use desktop application.

The key is that it serves more as a notifying application than an aggregator, as it gives you a real-time snapshot of e-mails, tweets, status updates and so forth. It helps you save time because you don't have to keep checking for updates. How is Digsby able to integrate all of these IM and social networking sites into one platform? The social networks have published APIs, which is phenomenal from our perspective. It's a lot of work. For instant messaging, there are multi-protocol IM clients that have been around for a while, so that also helps.

When Digsby set out to improve Twitter, what did it identify as the platform's chief strengths and flaws? We haven't tackled Skype yet; that's supposed to be the toughest one to integrate into an application like Digsby. The great thing about Twitter is that it's like a giant chat room where you can choose who you want to listen to in that room. Instead you interact with the whole online community whether they're your personal friends or not. It's not like Facebook where it's a closed social network. From a weakness standpoint, a lot of people that join Twitter don't get it because it's not like a lot of social networking sites they've used before.

To address the issue of people not understanding how Twitter works, we've reframed it more as a chat technology that people have been using for a decade. And the other problem is that once you follow more than 50 or so people, that noise just becomes tremendous and hard to keep track of. So when you use Twitter on Digsby, the most recent tweets appear at the bottom with previous tweets at the top of the screen. The other thing we did was to give you the ability to make subgroups of people on Twitter that you want to listen to a little bit less than your core group of friends. We thought that making this more like a traditional chat system would make it more accessible for average users. On the Twitter Web site you have main timeline, and with everybody you're following, it starts to get pretty cluttered.

So for instance, you can create a group called 'news' where you can place the tweets of journalists you have to be following. So to fix this we let you make different groups. Then those people you've added to this list no longer show up on your main page where you would keep your friends or people whose tweets you really want to read. The next big thing we're doing is adding supports for group chat protocols and also releasing a version of Digsby that works for Mac and Linux computers, since right now Digsby is only available for Windows. Finally, does Digsby plan on integrating any other IM protocols or social networking sites in the near future?

D.C. appoints CTO to take over scandal tainted agency

The District of Columbia this week hired a specialized search engine developer and entrepreneur as its new chief technology officer, overseeing what is arguably one of the most visible, progressive - and troubled - municipal technology operations in the U.S. New CTO Bryan Sivak is the founder of InQuira Inc. a privately held San Bruno, Calif.-based knowledge management firm, and has long worked on developing search engine technology designed for customer service environments. The new CTO joins a technology operation has faced some difficulties this year. Sivak succeeds Vivek Kundra, who left earlier this year after his appointment by President Barack Obama to become the nation's first CIO. That position had been filled on an interim basis since Kundra's departure. A week after Kundra was appointed to the White House post, federal law enforcement officials filed bribery charges against Yusuf Acar, the department's acting chief security officer, in connection with what prosecutors alleged were a number of schemes developed to defraud the District of thousands of dollars.

Payments were allegedly made to those "workers." After the arrests, Kundra took a leave from his new federal post. The scheme involved adding non-existent employees, or "ghost workers"," to the city payroll. Once the Obama administration determined that Kundra was not connected to the bribery scheme, he returned to the post. He is also a strong proponent of cloud computing. Kundra gained notoriety and the attention of the Obama administration for his efforts to increase accessibility to government data. Mitchell Kramer, an analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group in Boston, said InQuira began operating as a developer of natural language search technology.

This technology differs from more general Google-type search products by indexing only relevant information that can best answer specific customer queries. Later it combined that technology with a knowledge management and search application to create customer service tools that help customers seek product information and help on a company's Web site. Kramer said the market served by InQuira is growing, and is focused on high-end customers. Kramer said it's unclear why someone with Sivak's background was selected for the District CTO's job. "For the last seven years he has worked for small software vendor that has a very narrow and not widely adopted application," he said. Salesforce.com is emerging as a competitor in that business. Kramer said Sivak could help the District use IT to provide better services to residents.

Sivak was not immediately available for comment. But he wondered how Sivak will handle more general IT issues, such as changes to the government's general ledger systems, at least in the short term. "I'm sure he is capable of learning that stuff, but it's not clear that he has had the experience in acquiring, building and supporting those applications," Kramer said. In a prepared statement announcing the appointment, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said that Sivak "brings a wealth of software and Internet technology experience to District government, and we look forward to putting his talents to good use for our residents." Prior to founding InQuira, Sivak co-founded Electric Knowledge LLC in 2000 along with Edwin Cooper. Sivak had earlier worked as a software engineer at IBM. In 2002 the company merged with answerFriend and the combined company became the basis of InQuira.

Rivals mock Microsoft's free security software

Although one of the top consumer security vendors welcomed Microsoft's Security Essentials to the market, another dismissed the new free software as a "poor product" that will "never be up to snuff." Earlier today, Microsoft launched Security Essentials , its free antivirus and antispyware software suite, which has been in development for almost a year. "I think it's a good thing that they're in the market," said Carol Carpenter, the general manager of Trend Micro's consumer division. "We look forward to the competition ... and I think Microsoft's targeting of developing countries and the unprotected is a good approach." Microsoft has pitched Security Essentials, which replaced the now-defunct for-a-fee Windows OneCare, as basic software suitable for users who can't, or won't, pay for security software. And now they've decided to go for the free market, but that's a very crowded market. Not everyone, however, agreed with Carpenter. "Security Essentials won't change anything," said Jens Meggers, Symantec's vice president of engineering. "Microsoft has a really bad track record in security," he added, ticking off several ventures into consumer security that the giant has tried, including Windows Defender, an anti-spyware tool bundled with Windows Vista and Windows 7; the released-monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool; and OneCare. "Like OneCare, Security Essentials is a poor product," said Meggers. "It has very average detection rates.

There's not much room to grow there." In a company blog, another Symantec employee called Security Essentials a "rerun" of OneCare , and said: "At the end of the day, Microsoft Security Essentials is a rerun no one should watch." It's no surprise that top-tier security vendors like Trend Micro and Symantec dismissed Security Essentials today. At the time, a Symantec executive said it was a capitulation by Microsoft, which was tacitly admitting it couldn't compete . But Meggers' take today was even more bearish. "We don't like the notion of 'basic,'" he said. "That makes me very worried, because the risk on the Web today is far too high for 'basic.' Tossing a bunch of little basic tools into the computing environment doesn't make it safe." Even Carpenter had some unkind words for Microsoft. "It's better to use something than to use nothing, but you get what you pay for," she said. "But I don't think it will worry the main security vendors. They did the same thing last year, when Microsoft announced the upcoming demise of OneCare and said it would ship a free, streamlined product. If I were a free, focused security company, trying to get my upsell over time, like AVG [Technologies], then I'd be concerned." Symantec's Meggers also wondered what took Microsoft so long to come up with Security Essentials. "It takes them an entire year to remove features from OneCare, to make something even worse than OneCare?" Meggers asked. "I could have done that with three developers in three months." And that's a good clue that Microsoft won't be able to keep up with the likes of Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee, Meggers added. "Look how long it took them to build it. When was the last time that Microsoft innovated?" The free Security Essentials can be downloaded for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 from the Microsoft Web site. Security needs constant innovation.

Apple adds Apps for Everything collections

Looks like Apple's taking some of the criticisms of its App Store to heart. Broken down into a handful of different categories like Apps for Cooks and Apps for Music, the collections consist of apps related to a specific topic. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a new section of its Web site, Apps for Everything.

There are currently 12 different collections, each featuring between eight and 24 applications along with tips for using the built-in features of your iPhone. The section also features lists of the top ten paid and free lists for the Travel category in the App Store. You might be traveling, for example, in which case Apple recommends apps like Frommer's travel guides or Currency for dealing with conversion rates and suggests tips such as using the Maps app to bookmark locations and remembering to turn off data roaming to save money. With more than 85,000 applications in the App Store, one common complaint is that it's gotten harder and harder to find quality apps. We don't yet know whether Apple will be adding more categories to its Web site in the future, or changing the composition of its existing collections. Apple's Staff Picks section (also available via the iPhone section of its Web site) is well known to draw attention to particular applications and these new Apps for Everything collections seems to be an extension of that.

Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Apple's new venture resembles-uncannily, some might say-our own App Guide essentials collections to which we regularly add new content assembled by the Macworld editorial staff. But at least we can all agree that it needs to be easier for consumers to find the best apps. [via The Loop]

Wall Street Beat: Red Hat, 3Com, PC sector boosts tech

Macroeconomic concerns put pressure on stocks in all sectors this week, but acquisitions and financial news continued to stoke investor hopes for an imminent recovery from the recession for IT. Though not all the news was positive, revenue numbers from Red Hat, 3Com and Palm, Dell's acquisition of services company Perot, and continued improvement in hardware sector surveys fed confidence in the tech sector. A drop in oil prices also raised concerns about economic activity and demand for energy. Stocks in major indices fell Thursday as market watchers absorbed news from the National Association of Realtors, which said home sales fell 2.7 percent in August compared with a rise of 7.2 percent in July. Meanwhile tech vendors, while feeling the effects of the recession, have been doing better than expected.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were $0.08 per share. Networking vendor 3Com Thursday morning reported that net income for the quarter ending Aug. 28 fell to US$7.5 million, or $0.02 per share, from $79.8 million a year earlier. Revenue declined 15 percent to $290.5 million. Excluding exceptional items, 3Com actually beat analyst expectations of $0.05-per-share earnings on revenue of $278.2 million, according to a Thomson Reuters poll. Though the numbers sound bad, $70 million in earnings from the prior year period came from a one-time occurrence: resolution of a patent dispute. For the current quarter, 3Com forecasts also trump analyst expectations.

Analysts were forecasting $0.06 a share on revenue of $286.9 million. 3Com was trading at $5.05, $0.26 up from the day earlier, after the announcement. The company expects earnings of $0.06 to $0.07 a share on revenue of $295 million to $305 million. On its part, Research In Motion had mixed financial news late Thursday. Excluding the charge, however, RIM would have earned $588.4 million, or $1.03 per share, on revenue of $3.53 billion, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The company reported that earnings declined by 4 percent for its second fiscal quarter as a legal charge offset sales of BlackBerry devices. Analysts had forecast earnings of $1.00 per share on revenue of $3.62 billion.

Acquisitions point to where the action is in tech, as companies jostle to ramp up on hot areas of tech. The real tech-stock success this week was Linux software and services vendor Red Hat, which Wednesday said that for the quarter ending Aug. 30, revenue was $183.6 million, an increase of 12 percent from the year-earlier period. "IT organizations continue to move ahead with purchases of high value solutions, and Red Hat is capitalizing on this demand as a result of our strong customer relationships and proven value proposition," said CEO Jim Whitehurst in the company's earnings statement. "We continue to be optimistic about Red Hat's future and believe the company is well positioned when the economic and IT spending environment improves," Bank of America-Merrill Lynch upgraded its recommendation on the company's stock and Bank of America raised its rating for the company to buy, noting the strong sales during a decline in corporate spending on IT. Red Hat shares were trading at $27.96 Thursday afternoon, up $3.08. M&A activity has also stirred excitement in tech lately. Dell Monday announced it would pay $3.9 billion to acquire IT services provider Perot Systems. HP last year bought service company EDS, and IBM has long been able to offer services to support a wide product portfolio. The move was widely seen as a way for Dell, the number-two PC company behind Hewlett-Packard, to match HP's and IBM's services offerings.

The move takes place as analysts revise estimates for PC sales upward. Its latest PC report said that current data show worldwide shipments could hit 285 million units in 2009, a 2 percent decline from 2008 shipments of 291 million, but well above its June forecast, which forecast a 6 percent unit decline in 2009. "PC demand appears to be running much stronger than we expected back in June, especially in the U.S. and China," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. "We think shipments are likely to be growing again in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the fourth quarter of 2008." Gartner said Wednesday that the worst may be over for the PC sector.

HP upgrades Unix platform with data protection

HP this week unveiled updates to its HP-UX Unix OS and Serviceguard high-availability software, offering capabilities in data protection, data privacy, and business continuity. The software packages run on HP Integrity and HP 900 servers. [ Check out InfoWorld's report on how HP has been looking to lure Sun Solaris Unix users to HP-UX. ] The Unix upgrade offers automated features to reduce maintenance requirements, improve availability, and enhance security, the company said. Update 5 of HP-UX 11i v3 and Serviceguard restore application services in the event of hardware or software failure, HP said. Users can lower operational costs and increase efficiency in such demanding applications as online transaction processing or business intelligence, according to HP. "Comprehensive" data protection is provided through encryption for data in transit and at rest, HP said.

Update 5 provides as much as 99 percent of raw disk performance, enabling reduction in operational costs for large databases and accelerated access to business-critical information. Enhanced data privacy is provided through Bastille, an automated system-hardening tool that configures a system to protect against unauthorized access. Administrator productivity is improved with expanded security bulletin analysis and patch maintenance. Business continuity is improved through minimization of downtime in the OS's Logical Volume Manager. Security issues are identified for as many as 100 systems in a single view when integrated with HP System Insight Manager. Simplified standards compliance is offered through PCI (Payment Card Industry) and Sarbanes-Oxley Act report templates HP Serviceguard, which is part of the HP Virtual Server Environment software suite, is integrated with HP-UX 11i to protect applications from down time, HP said.

Another improvement is elimination of business interruptions with Online Package Maintenance capabilities that run routine maintenance and upgrades while the system is active. Business connectivity is enabled during Serviceguard upgrades through a Dynamic Root Disk tool that reduces server network down time by 75 percent, the company said. Management of server connections is improved with a graphical cluster topology map for administration and configuration.  Also, traffic is coordinated between clustered servers and storage arrays.

Global Dispatches: Ex-Google exec helps Chinese startups

Fund Formed for Chinese Start-ups BEIJING - Kai-Fu Lee, who resigned as president of Google Inc.'s China operation earlier this month, has founded an angel investment fund and plans to help out three to five new Chinese high-tech companies annually. Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube Inc., is also an investor in Innovation Works. The fund, dubbed Innovation Works, launched with some $115 million (U.S.) provided by several IT vendors, including Taipei-based Foxconn Electronics Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. The new company said the funds will be used to train young entrepreneurs and help them build Internet, mobile Internet and cloud computing companies. - Owen Fletcher, IDG News Service Telecom Firms Plan Joint Venture LONDON - Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA plan to form a joint venture that would oversee their respective U.K. mobile communications networks - T-Mobile U.K. and Orange U.K. The combined company would have about 28.4 million customers, or 37% of U.K. mobile subscribers, leapfrogging current market leader O2 U.K. Ltd., which reported 20.7 million customers at the end of June, the companies said.

Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said he will rule on the complaint later this month. - Agam Shah, IDG News Service The venture is expected to realize overall savings of more than £3.5 billion ($5.7 billion U.S.) by, among other things, closing some stores and "optimizing" the companies' customer service staffs. - Peter Sayer, IDG News Service Briefly Noted The European Union has confirmed that its ombudsman received a complaint from Intel Corp. in July alleging that "procedural errors" were made by the European Commission during an antitrust investigation that led to a record fine of €1.06 billion ($1.44 billion U.S.) against the chip maker.

Perot wins key health-care IT outsourcing deal in India

Perot Systems has bagged a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in India, its first outside the U.S. The win reflects Perot's bid to grow its health-care business in markets other than the U.S., as well as in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico, company executives said on Friday. But only 4.1 percent of the company's revenue from the health-care industry was from outside the U.S., up from 2.5 percent two years ago, said Kevin Fickenscher, executive vice president for International Healthcare at Perot, in a telephone interview. In the second quarter, 48 percent of Perot's revenue came from the health-care industry. Expansion outside the U.S. is a key focus area for Perot, said Raj Asava, Perot's chief strategy officer.

The maturing health-care industry in these emerging markets has a big appetite and also funds to invest in technologies such as electronic health records and clinical information systems, Asava said. For its health-care business, the company is targeting emerging markets in the Middle East, China, India, and Latin America, besides more mature markets such as the U.K. and Germany. The contract with Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, has an initial value of US$18 million, but could go up in value as more applications and services are added, Perot said. The deployment will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) electronic health record and health information system, he added. Besides running the applications already installed at Max, Perot will also deploy an electronic health records system and other IT infrastructure, Fickenscher said. Perot already has a services subsidiary in India with about 9,000 staff that offer outsourcing services to customers in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world.

Multinational and Indian service providers are targeting India's growing services market, including in the telecommunications sector where a number of mobile service providers are outsourcing their IT infrastructure. About 60 percent of these staff do work for the health-care industry. The immediate opportunity for vendors of IT targeting the health-care industry is from private sector providers, but government run hospitals will soon follow, Fickenscher said.

Researchers slam fickle iPhone anti-fraud feature

The iPhone's new defense - meant to prevent users from reaching phishing sites - is inconsistent at best, a security researcher said today, with some users getting warnings about dangerous links, while others are allowed to blithely surf to criminal URLs. Other experts said that the fickle feature is worse than no defense at all. But according to Michael Sutton, the vice president of security research at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Zscaler, the new protection is "clearly having issues." At first, said Sutton, the anti-phishing feature was simply not working. "It was blocking nothing," Sutton claimed after testing iPhone 3.1's new tool Wednesday against a list of known fraudulent sites. Apple quietly added an anti-fraud feature to the iPhone's Safari browser with the update to iPhone 3.1 , released Wednesday. By Thursday, things had improved, but just barely. "Yesterday, it started blocking some sites, for some users, but it was inconsistent.

Apple relies on Google 's SafeBrowsing API (application programming interface) for the underlying data used to build anti-phishing and anti-malware blocking lists for the desktop edition of its Safari browser. Some sites are being blocked, others are not." That led Sutton to believe that the feature's functionality wasn't the issue, but how Apple updates users with a "blacklist" of malicious sites. Other browser makers, including Google and Mozilla, also use SafeBrowsing. "It appears some iPhones are getting timely updates [from Apple], but others are not, or are getting different [block list] feeds," Sutton said. "I'm feeling better about the feature than I was Wednesday, but clearly Apple is still have issues. URLs that are blocked by Safari in Mac OS X open and direct users to malicious pages [on the iPhone]." Like Sutton, James reported inconsistencies in the anti-fraud feature's effectiveness. "All we've come up with is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," said James. "This is clearly more dangerous than no protection at all, because if users think they are protected, they are less careful about which links they click." The new feature is turned on by default in iPhone 3.1; the option to turn it off is in Settings/Safari/Security, and is listed as "Fraud Warning." Sutton, although willing to concede that Apple overall is improving its security track record, bemoaned the state of mobile security in general, and the iPhone's in particular. "The greater concern to me is that we're making the same mistakes in mobile that we made on the desktop," he said. "On the desktop, security has gotten slowly better, but [with mobile] we have a fresh start. With the [media] coverage of the problem, maybe they're resolving it, or trying to." On Thursday, researchers at Intego, a Mac-only antivirus vendor, echoed Sutton's findings. "This feature should warn users that they may be visiting a known malicious Web site and ask if they wish to continue," said Peter James, a spokesman for Intego who writes the company's Mac security blog . "However, we have extensively tested this feature, tossing dozens of phishing URLs at it, and it simply does not seem to work. I would have thought we would have learned from our mistakes, but there's virtually no protection in mobile browsers." According to research conducted by NSS Labs, which was hired by Microsoft to benchmark different desktop browsers' ability to block malware-laden sites, Safari in Mac OS X and Windows blocked only one-in-five malicious sites . Internet Explorer and Firefox, meanwhile, blocked 80% and 27%, respectively.

Last month, NSS Labs attributed the disparities between Firefox, Safari and Google - all which use SafeBrowsing as the basis for their blacklists, to differences in how each browser tweaked, then applied, the lists. Google's Chrome blocked a paltry 7% of the sites.

LocalEats app looks to save diners dollars

Heading out for a bite in the Big Apple? Then you might want to have LocalEats installed on your iPhone or iPod touch. The $1 restaurant finder has teamed up with local restaurants to offer mobile coupons to the app's users.

Here's how it works: Participating restaurants now sport a green Savings Available badge in LocalEats' New York listings. Tap on the restaurant to go to its entry, and you'll see a Coupons tab at the bottom of the screen next to LocalEats' customary Basics, Description, and Local Map buttons. Tap the Coupon buttons, and you get a horizontally oriented coupon-no corkage fee if you bring a bottle of wine to Alto, for example, or a $59 three-course prix fixe menu at The Four Seasons. When it's time to order, take out your iPhone, show the virtual coupon to your server, and reap the savings.

LocalEats' developer says that many New York restaurants have signed on, such as Daniel, Babbo, and Rosa Mexicano among others. You can get the complete list of participating eateries on the Web.

As I noted in my review of LocalEats last year, the app isn't like many of the other restaurant finders which depend upon user reviews. Instead, LocalEats draws upon data from the Where the Locals Eat Web site to provide very specific reviews of very specific eateries-the top 100 or so restaurants in each of the metropolitan areas it serves, in fact. It's a terrific tool for travelers looking to broaden their culinary horizons beyond chain restaurants or even locals who want to discover well-regarded places in their own backyard.

The coupon feature is limited to New York restaurants now. But the hope is that, with listings for 50 cities, LocalEats will eventually be able to roll out the service to diners across the country.

Mac News Briefs: CheckUp adds compatibility with latest Macs

App4Mac announced an update for CheckUp, improving the interface and adding other enhancements to the system maintenance tool.

CheckUp works with PowerPC G4-, G5- and Intel-based Macs to check on disks and memory while also monitoring CPU, memory, disk drive, and network adapter usage. Users can set rules that are automatically triggered by certain conditions, enabling CheckUp to alert them about possible hardware problems.

CheckUp 2.5's new user interface includes improvements to the system and fonts views. Users now have the option to export graph data, change the default app for any document, or select a folder for indexing documents. The 2.5 update makes CheckUp compatible with recently released Mac hardware; it also prepares the application for Snow Leopard, the next major update to Mac OS X due out later this year.

CheckUp 2.5 is a free update for existing users. The program costs €29 (about $41, as of this writing). App4Mac says Checkup 2.5 is currently available as a beta with a final version slated for a July 14 release.-Philip Michaels

TopXNotes adds QuickStart feature

A minor update to TopXNotes introduces a QuickStart feature to the Mac note manager. In addition, developer Tropical Software says the 1.4.1 update released Thursday fixes a problem with importing notes to some iPods.

TopXNotes lets users store and retrieve notes, clippings, and other bits of information; the manager can categorize and group notes as well.

The QuickStart feature in version 1.4.1 is aimed at first-time users to help familiarize them with the note manager. As for the bug fix, it addresses a problem in which TopXNotes did not properly recognize the iPod classic when users tried exporting notes; Tropical Software says the issue affected a "small percentage" of TopXNotes users.

The update is free to existing users; TopXNotes costs $40 and runs on OS X 10.3.9 and later.-PM

Pro Sled hard drive sleds speed up drive-swapping for Mac Pros

Trans International has announced the Pro Sled hard drive sleds for Mac Pro users.

The $29 Pro Sled 3.5" is designed for 3.5-inch SATA drives, while the $39 Pro Sled 2.5" holds 2.5-inch SATA drives.

The company says that its additional sleds allow for easy drive exchanges, ideal in high-volume settings where it's important to assign drives to individual clients or projects, or for backup purposes.-Jonathan Seff

Apple finds silver lining in verdict on green claims

Apple on Friday claimed victory in an environmental laptop tiff with Dell, which earlier complained that Apple was misleading buyers by calling its laptops "the world's greenest family of notebooks."

Dell had filed a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, saying Apple's use of the phrase was a "broad superiority claim" against all manufacturers' laptops. NAD investigated the advertised tagline and implied claims that Apple's laptops were "greener" than other brands.

After the investigation, NAD on Thursday said that consumers could be misled by Apple's claims, which were used in Internet and TV advertisements. NAD suggested that Apple change the green tagline in advertisements to "avoid overstatement," which otherwise could cause confusion among buyers, who might think MacBooks are superior to other laptops.

NAD evaluated Apple's MacBooks based on the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) rating, a recognized standard that helps consumers compare PCs based on their environmental impact. NAD stated that Apple has high EPEAT ratings across its entire line of laptops, while no other manufacturer has "comparable high ratings for all of the notebooks it produces."

Apple "elected to only produce computer notebooks that meet the highest EPEAT ratings," NAD said in its Thursday ruling.

However, NAD found that certain laptop brands, such as Toshiba's Portege line, had a higher EPEAT rating than MacBooks.

Apple did not comment on whether it would make changes based on NAD's recommendations. However, a company spokeswoman said the recommendations confirm Apple's commitment to being green.

"The NAD's ruling is a clear victory for Apple. The case challenged our claim to the 'world's greenest family of notebooks,' and NAD has confirmed that MacBooks are in fact the world's greenest notebook computers when compared to other manufacturers' product lines as a whole," the spokeswoman said.

Dell did not respond to a request for comment.

Nonprofit environmental groups have backed Apple's efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its PCs. Greenpeace International in 2007 applauded Apple's commitment to phase out by 2008 the use on components and circuit boards of chemicals that could affect human health. Those chemicals included brominated fire retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

"That beats Dell and other computer manufacturers' pledge to phase them out by 2009," Greenpeace said at the time. Greenpeace also praised Apple's "green" advertising campaign that highlighted the reduced environmental impact of its PCs.

Apple also gained ground in Greenpeace's ranking of green electronics companies issued in March this year, while competitors including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo lost points. The list grades top consumer electronics and IT companies based on their environmental efforts and recycling efforts, as well as the power consumption and chemical content in their products.

Apple was perhaps the earliest PC maker to commit itself to reducing the environmental impact of its products, said Sarah Westervelt, a spokeswoman for the Basel Action Network, an environmental nonprofit. But no matter how green they are, laptops from all manufacturers will continue to have toxins, she said. Some circuit boards may have traces of lead and other harmful toxins, while batteries have chemicals such as cadmium that could be dangerous to health.

Dell and Apple are involved in a pointless slinging match, because green is an ambiguous concept, said Michael Kanellos, senior analyst and editor-in-chief at analyst firm GreenTech Media. It is hard to measure the entire environmental impact of products, he said. For example, the environmental impact of a laptop could involve the amount of fuel used to ship laptops and related components.

But using generic metrics such as power consumption, the overall impact of the laptops on the environment is relatively small, Kanellos said. Computers use about 1 percent of the power consumed in homes, while lights consume 26 percent, Kanellos said, citing 2006 statistics from the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University. In offices, computers make up 4 percent of power consumption, compared with 25 percent for lights.

Nevertheless, Dell and Apple realize that efforts are needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts associated with laptops, Kanellos said. Dell is advertising "green" as a way to cut costs for the company and its customers, while Apple is using it as a "lifestyle" term to sell products like the iPhone and Mac computers.

Intel Delays Itanium Server Chip Till 2010

Intel Corp. has once again delayed the release of its next-generation Itanium server processor to develop undisclosed "application scalability" enhancements.

The schedule set May 21 calls for the server chip, code-named Tukwila, to ship in the first quarter of 2010.

Tukwila had initially been slated for release early this year, but in February the company announced that it would have to delay it until mid-2009 in order to add a faster interconnect and support for new technologies like DDR3 memory.

A spokesman said the latest updates will be designed to speed the performance of highly threaded workloads.

The quad-core, 64-bit Itanium processor line is designed mainly for mainframe-based applications that require significant memory bandwidth.

Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat, said the design changes may have been requested by Hewlett-Packard Co., the primary user of Itanium chips. "The Itanium processor is pretty much a custom solution for HP," McGregor said. "HP has a huge investment in this, and they buy most of the processors."

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., said the latest delay could affect HP's ability to win new customers as competitive products like IBM's Power processors continue "firing on all cylinders."

During a webcast for investors last week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said the Itanium processor business should get a boost from Oracle Corp.'s acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc., developer of the rival Sparc chip. Otellini cited potential uncertainty surrounding the future of the Sparc processor line despite Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's pledge to stay in the hardware business and increase spending on Sparc development.